I Urge You to Subscribe

I entered a contest today, which I hardly ever do because I am poor. I'll never win this one, though, because as I sat staring in despair at my boring cover letter I felt compelled to cross out Sincerely yours and write Extremely warm next to it. Extremely warm! I haven't laughed so much in days. It is self-sabotage, maybe, much like the huge drawing of naked Abraham Lincoln I enclosed with my last Paris Review submission, to remind a certain Dan Chiasson of our bitter fake enmity. I am not kidding, that submission was returned in four days tops. My deepest apologies, Paris Review, but it turns out that sending submissions is boring. When I finally launch my own magazine, I will require people to include two animal drawings on every submission: an animal having sex with the title and an animal giving birth to the last line. I will call it Articulated Animal Bones and I'll probably just go ahead and publish every submission I get.